Screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
Story by John Rogers and Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
Directed by Michael Bey
“So if it’s some super advanced robot, why does it turn back into a piece-of-crap Camaro?”
Reasons why I enjoyed TRANSFORMERS far more than I thought I would:
(1) Optimus Prime’s voice was his original cartoon voice! I love you, Peter Cullen…
(2) Optimus Prime was given a giant golden sword of death, which he wielded with brutal beauty.
For the above two points, I forgive his revised, pimp-mobile appearance…
(3) Shia LaBeouf was quite wonderful in his role as Sam Witwicky…by far the best actor in the film, and I look forward to seeing him in future movies.
(4) The Autobots were kept to a small minimum, and given decent personalities…and the Decepticon Soundwave was batsh*t crazy! A schizo-bot who chatters to himself, and makes silly mistakes with pratfall consequences. His death is the funniest moment in the film, by far.
(5) Bumblebee’s method of communication, without vocal chords, was goffy but sweet.
Reasons why TRANSFORMERS is still a silly, ridiculous film:
(1) Megatron…what the hell IS he? A gun? A plane? A spiky collection of metal masquerading as modern art with attitude? God knows what…but he’s certainly not present in the film anywhere near long enough to be a successful leader of the evil villains.
(2) None of the Decepticons were given as much personality development as the Autobots…especially Starscream, one of the most popular of the Decepticons. They’re just faceless engines of destruction, that could have come from any generic alien-action film. It’s a waste of potential…
(3) Most of the acting falls between standard-but-not-embarrassing (Jon Voight), exceptionally irritating (Kevin Dunn & Julie White as the teeth-grinding Witwicky parents), and downright abysmal…with John Turturro chewing on scenery as if it were cotton candy, while Megan Fox as a smart-juvie-criminal-babe is such cardboard that she makes Denise Richards’ turn as a nuclear scientist in The World is Not Enough look like Oscar-worthy material!
(4) Corny lines (the “hundred times cooler than Armageddon” remark was VERY sad), corny cliches (the classroom scene at the beginning), corny stereotypes (Anthony Anderson as the fat, geeky, DDR-playing, grandma-whipped computer genius)…corny all around. Too corny, even for REAL corn!
(5) The action & battle sequences were incredibly hard to follow – the robots are so big, the destruction so massive, that it was actually difficult to focus on and follow what was going on…and at certain points, it simply dissolved into fast-moving blurs of colour and fire.
With Steven Spielberg as an executive producer — and insisting on emotional character and story moments — the end result is a movie of RIDICULOUS proportions! It’s actually 3 or 4 movies, fighting for space on the same large-screen…Spielberg-child-like-wonder, at war with Michael Bey’s usual pop-culture-destruction-rumble-in-the-big-city theatrics. It’s funny, it’s crass, it’s sweet, it’s exceptionally saccharine & corny…it’s touching, it’s hang-you-head-in-shame bad at times…
…but it was certainly more enjoyable than Spiderman 3!
Mind you, I’m non-too-keen on (1) the token black Autobot (Jazz) being the only one to DIE (talk about your cliches!), and (2) they didn’t ONCE use the Transformers theme music! The cads…
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